I know what you must be thinking as you see this title: “Why is this person writing an article about New Year now?” Indeed, yes. As I write this, it’s been 20 days since January 1st, so I guess I’ve already failed 2026.Â
But… It’s not that deep. There is nothing wrong with not having gone through the classic New Year rituals—coming from someone who once attached deep significance to it, viewing it as a miraculous new beginning. Boy, would I religiously write down resolutions, affirmations, reflections, and spend hours making the perfect vision board. However, life has now rendered me indifferent to the point that I now view the New Year as simply a new day on the calendar, not to mention an excuse to sleep in. And no, I don’t mean to belittle New Year traditions, or hate on those who go through the whole rigmarole of journaling and eating twelve grapes at midnight and whatnot. I purely speak for myself when I say I don’t find too much meaning in these traditions, as I often end up disappointing myself by following them. What I have also realised is that sometimes we attach far too much importance to certain aspects of the new year, which usually land us in a pit of self-loathing. So this is for those who drown in guilt for not having the most perfect start to 2026. Some New Year norms are just… myths.
The new year is a new beginning… on a calendar
No, you haven’t pressed some kind of cosmic reset button that saves all your last year’s progress and starts you on a new program. Of course, it is always comforting to believe that you can start afresh when January 1st comes around, so you can erase all the residual guilt and regret you built up over the last year, as you couldn’t fulfill all your goals.Â
But you know what’s even more comforting? You can do this at any time. If you’re feeling particularly ballsy, you can even start on 31st December. Truth is, New Year’s is simply another day, and whether or not you make life-changing decisions on that day, the clock keeps ticking, and the world keeps spinning. The way I see it, time is fluid, and life fluctuates constantly—it’s only we who give it rigid structure and create meaning out of it; hence, we tend to believe that we’re on some kind of daunting schedule where we need to start diligently following our resolutions immediately when the new year begins. Truth is, the New Year shouldn’t be the only motivation to change our lives for the better. Feeling guilty for “restarting” after a few months into the year isn’t gonna do anything for us, because change is constant and dynamic—it ebbs and flows regardless of human-made constructs of time.
So come on, get back up. Don’t beat yourself up for not having done day 5 of the 75 Hard challenge. You have the next day, even the next hour, to fulfil your resolutions. Do it!
Love the vision, hate the pressure.
Okay, this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I don’t really believe in vision boards. Whoops. I said it!
Not that they’re useless. I understand that the purpose of a vision board is to have a clear idea of the goals you want to work towards, and visualising them is almost like a manifestation ritual that gives us hope that we could actually achieve all those “visions” on our board. Nothing wrong with hoping a little, you know? Yet sometimes, that hope can go overboard and turn into heavily romanticized, rose-coloured expectations of what we want our year to look like. For example, 16-year-old me at the beginning of 2023 was already having a pretty sucky time amidst the hell that was board prep. So to ease my pain, I thought of making a vision board to manifest the typical American high school experience I was looking forward to when I’d join a new, international school later that year. Unfortunately, it was anything but that—all I got was a bunch of bratty kids in my batch (anyone who has gone to an international school in Bangalore can probably relate). The vision board had heightened my expectations so much that I had ultimately set myself up for disappointment.
So is the moral of my sob story to stop making vision boards? No. Rather, it’s not to pin all your hopes on what’s essentially just a collage made of paper or pixels. You never know how the year may turn out, as it could throw all sorts of curveballs at you.Â
After all, that’s part of the thrill of it: things you never thought would happen can happen, for better or worse. The best you can do is simply keep your mind open to anything that may come your way.